


Banana boat to Cloud Island

by rohkeutta



Category: Captain America (Movies), Jurassic World (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Jurassic Park, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Dinosaurs, Inspired by a Movie, M/M, POV Bucky Barnes, POV Steve Rogers, Reunions, Velociraptors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-18
Updated: 2015-12-18
Packaged: 2018-05-07 01:44:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5438873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rohkeutta/pseuds/rohkeutta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The list of things James really values in life is relatively short these days: a good night's sleep, a life without body armor, a well-working team, and a pack of raptors. On Isla Nublar he has them all.</p><p>Then, naturally, Rogers turns up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Banana boat to Cloud Island

He's been on Isla Nublar for three years when Captain arrives.

He's there, because it’s far away; because it’s warm; because their background and identity checks are bullshit, and his aliases were meant to pass a lot closer scrutiny; because there he finally isn’t the scariest motherfucking nightmare material on that godforsaken island. He's there because a pack of four long-tailed predators doesn’t give a fuck about whom he's killed, how many fingernails he's pulled off, how many shots he's taken from the rooftops, whose houses he's set on fire. They won’t give a fuck unless he’ll try to hurt them. He’s not planning to.

He's there, because he feels like a raptor himself, a little. On Isla Nublar he isn’t the only quick, sharp-toothed creature; genetically modified killer. There, he has a family. There, he's only partly animal.

Captain is the new head of Security Operations Unit, responsible for the safety of the personnel. People talk about ex-military, but that’s pretty much the only gossip James hears, because he doesn’t eat in the mess or sleep at the dorms. He’s the resident ghost, and people are more scared of him than the dinosaurs, sometimes, because he has a thousand-yard stare, a metal arm, and a pack of lethal animals. So he stays in his bungalow in the jungle, and feels safe.

His team talks a bit, someone recognizing Captain from a news reel some months ago, but nobody at their facility cares enough to delve deeper into the reasons why Captain is now on Isla Nublar. James is glad. He picked his own team personally, and most of them are more or less like his shadows: level-headed, introverts, not prone to gossip. In the odd case of someone feeling like whispering about the other people on the island, a week in the company of James and his ghost-like presence, eerie connection with the raptors, and team of glaring individuals working together like a well-oiled machine is enough to either drive them away or wipe off that kind of tendencies.

James’ team trusts him implicitly, and he trusts them to not fuck up. There are people who actually look up to him, nowadays, even with his scary-ass arm and clearly carried baggage. He wonders almost every day if this is what it actually felt like to be a squad leader. He doesn’t remember many things from Iraq, but he remembers responsibility, kindness, leave-no-one-behind.

The list of things James really values in life is relatively short these days: a good night's sleep, a life without body armor, a well-working team, and a pack of raptors. On Isla Nublar he has them all.

Then, naturally, Rogers turns up.

\--

Captain makes his rounds through the whole island and the facilities one by one. By the time he comes to see James’ team, he's been on the island for almost a month and James hasn’t seen a peep of him, except his picture in the database James likes to hack into. James knows exactly who he is. He’s surprised so many others seem oblivious to it.

“Sarge,” Melanie calls as soon as he gets off his dirt bike on a Thursday morning, three years and thirty-six days since he came to the island on board a glorified banana boat. “Captain Rogers is here to see ya.”

James has already noticed the unfamiliar Jeep outside the paddock; Melanie and Rogers are standing next to it. Rogers looks good: he's lost the hollow look he had the last time James saw him, back in D.C., through the scope of his rifle and later behind the shelf in Rogers’ closest grocery store, when James was sweating off ten years of torture and brainwashing. He remembers Rogers now, having been three years a free man, but he still recalls easily the last glimpse of that shell of a man in the supermarket.

Rogers looks a little startled when he sees James, but collects himself instantly, shakes his head a little like trying to lose a thought. “Steve Rogers,” he introduces himself and offers his hand for a shake. “I’m the new captain of Security Operations Unit, as you probably know.”

James shakes his hand, keeps his cool. “James Gogol. Leading trainer, Integrated Behavioral Raptor Intelligence Study. You’ve met my second, Melanie Zhang.”

He calls himself Gogol, nowadays, mostly to give himself a plausible excuse when he slips into Russian, or his accent thickens towards the Caucasus. It has nothing to do with a street with that name, somewhere in _Nizhegorodskaya oblast_ , where an old babushka gave him boiled potatoes and tough bread, and didn’t ask any unnecessary questions about why a grown man with a rifle and a muzzle-like half-mask was crying on the roadside. He didn’t know why he was weeping, because it was a standard mission up to the point when he looked at a skinny, blond Russian opposition punk through his rifle scope and shot him through the eye. James knows it now.

“So you guys train raptors here, right?” Rogers asks, eyes scanning James’ face.

“We train raptors for public display, and research the possibilities of further training for military use in IBRIS Project, which is initiated and overseen by Commander Hoskins of InGen Security Division,” James recites the official statement, turns to lead the way. It’s a load of bullshit, even though he keeps his opinions to himself. Mostly.

Rogers quirks his brow, probably at James’ flat, unimpressed tone. “And how’s that coming through?”

“Well,” James says dryly as he unlocks the stairway door up to the walkways, “they're dinosaurs, not exactly some fucking German shepherds.” He wonders whether he should be less blunt and more subordinate, but Rogers snorts, like he’s amused, and James remembers again that they aren't in the army anymore.

“Have we met before?” Rogers asks as they climb the stairs. “You look familiar.”

James shrugs, is suddenly glad of his long hair and scruff. “There are a lot of guys who look like me.”

James doesn’t see Rogers’ face, but he sounds dubious as he replies under his breath, “Right.”

“We have four raptors currently,” James explains. “Blue, Charlie, Delta, and Echo. I imprinted on them when they hatched, and it has proven to be successful in building trust. They recognize over 40 voice and hand commands nowadays, but are not yet fully trained for public.”

“So you’re able to control the raptors?” Rogers asks, apparently letting the abrupt subject change slide.

James snorts and turns to the walkway. “It’s not control, Captain. Animals are not meant to be _controlled_. It’s mutual respect.”

“Huh,” Rogers says, sounding surprised. “I’ve never thought it that way, but it makes sense. The raptors have respect for humans, then?”

James shrugs, waves at the dinosaurs below. “These ones? For me, at least, to some extent. They trust me to not mistreat them, and I trust them to not perhaps bite off my hand through the bars. Overall? I wouldn’t be so sure.”

They walk down the bridge so Rogers can see the raptors. James calls them all by their names, points out their individual colors, and watches Rogers stare at them, strange enthrallment in his eyes. James doesn’t judge him: there's something fascinating about the velociraptors and the way they turn in unison and cock their heads up when James’ voice carries down.

“They're beautiful,” Rogers blurts, like he’s bewildered to realize he thinks so. James’ mouth curls up in one corner and he nods. Blue makes a half-snorting, half-growling sound at Rogers’ voice.

“Shut it, Blue,” James calls down easily. “Cap’n Rogers is your new big boss. Get used to it.”

Blue huffs, almost like she’s amused and maybe fondly exasperated. James expects her to start rolling her eyes at him any day. Rogers looks like his eyes are going to bulge out of his head.

James points out the armed guards, the rest of his training team, and the security measures they are taking to keep both the personnel and the animals safe. Rogers takes it in, all the while stealing glances at the raptors, and that’s when all hell breaks loose.

James has a second to see the squealing pig running loose down in the enclosure, before someone shouts to catch it. The raptors freeze and whip towards the smell and sound like a hivemind. Then they charge.

Sunny, the intern, runs to the walkway to catch the pig with a long-handled hand net, but Charlie knocks against it in his haste to get to the pig, and the next thing they see is Sunny, losing his balance, somersaulting over the railing, and falling down to the paddock, screaming. The raptors stop at their tracks, pig forgotten now when there’s bigger prey on the menu, and _Jesus_ , out of all days this just _had_ to happen on the day Rogers pays them a visit.

“Hold your fire!” James barks at the guards, grabs the railing with his gloved left hand and vaults over, ignoring the startled noise Rogers makes, the aborted gesture towards him. His boots hit the ground ten meters below with the dull, heavy _thud_ , when he drops down between Sunny and his raptors.

“Blue, cтоп!” he orders, his right hand extended towards the raptors, left hand behind his back, signaling for Melanie to open the gate and get Sunny out. Blue, Echo, and Charlie prowl in a half-circle in front of him, heads tilting, tails swishing. Delta is at their six, watching out for other possible threats or preys.

“Easy, Charlie,” he murmurs, listening to the gate creaking open and Sunny scrambling for cover. It’s a miracle he isn’t badly hurt after his fall. “Keep your eyes on me, Echo.”

Blue croons at him as he inches slowly, slowly backwards to the gate, his hand as a barrier between them. Above him Rogers and the guards stand in attention, guns trained at them.

“Quit that goddamn bellyaching, Blue, you ain’t fooling anyone,” he says softly, the old Brooklyn twang briefly back in his voice, then raises his voice so Melanie can hear him. “Close the gate.”

“What? _No_ ,” Rogers’ voice comes from above. He ignores it.

“But Sarge--” Melanie starts.

“Do it,” he orders, and after a hesitation pause she obeys.

“Good girls,” he murmurs, as kindly as he dares, all the while listening for the tell-tale groan the gate makes when it passes halfway. He can almost taste the sick terror of watching a man about to be eaten alive, oozing from everybody at the perimeter.

Then, the groan comes, and he throws himself back, swift and unnaturally fast, and rolls through the gap under the gate, just before it clangs shut and his raptors charge against it.

There's a stunned silence as he draws a deep breath. Then steps hurry down the walkway to the stairs, and Melanie helps Sunny up and says, “Jesus, James. Jesus.”

James closes his eyes for a second, then raises carefully his right hand towards Blue, who is pushing her snout through the bars, growling a little. “Easy, babydoll.” He lays his hand slowly on the side of Blue’s snout and caresses in short, soft movements. The growling quiets down. “You guys did well.” He glances at Sunny. “You hangin’ on, kid?”

Sunny nods, shakily, leaning heavily to Melanie’s arm. “Yeah. Thanks, Sarge. Thanks.”

He will be okay, James thinks as he watches them leave the entryway enclosure, Sunny limping a little. Sunny is made of way stronger stuff than he seems, and if this incident doesn’t drive him away, he will be respected a helluva lot for surviving the meet-cute with James’ best girls.

“Sergeant Gogol,” Rogers’ voice carries from the other side of the bars. He's very clearly having trouble controlling his face, looking shocked, relieved, and mostly just impressed while trying to actually be stern. “Is jumping down to the raptor pen a standard procedure?”

James pats Blue once more, then gets up, brushes dirt from his pants. “No,” he says. “The standard procedure would be either shooting the raptors or watching the fuckin’ guy get eaten. I don’t like either option.”

He goes to check the gate locking system while he lets that sink in Rogers’ head. Then he waves his left hand at his crew and the paddock and says, “Anyone else tryin’ the same would just end up as an extra meal for them. I have… advantages.”

“Right,” Rogers replies, looking a little stunned. “Your raptors didn’t seem very uncooperative to me. Looks like you're getting some results after all.”

James shrugs and gets out of the entryway cage. Rogers steps back to let him through, but James is still almost in his space. Rogers is taller than James remembers, or he is shorter himself because of all the hellwork done to him.

“They are about 73 % trained for display, and their only way to a warzone would be over my dead body. I have trained them from the day they hatched, that’s why they recognise me.” James locks the gate behind him, shaking his head. “They are smart as hell but can't make any goddamn difference between terrorists and civilians. Imagine them loose in a city considered to be ‘enemy’.”

The venom in his voice tells pretty clearly what he thinks about it. James has seen so much death that it feels ridiculous to train these animals so that some bighead can order them to slaughter people they believe to be evil. It reminds him uncomfortably much about himself, and he doesn’t want that happening to anyone or anything else, be it a person or an animal.

Rogers considers that, frowning. James is rather sure Rogers has read as much about IBRIS from the databases as he has access to, and James knows him well enough to know that he has to despise Hoskins and his plans on using the dinosaurs on the battlefield. “True, it sounds dubious. You a military man, Gogol?”

James turns away, a bitter taste in his mouth and traces of phantom blood under his fingernails. “A long time ago. Follow me, I’ll show you our security backlogs.”

Rogers doesn’t ask any more questions.

 

Gogol excuses himself after Steve has inspected the logs and noticed nothing unusual, apart from the top-notch care the records have been made with, to oversee the feeding of the raptors and check on the unlucky intern. Trainer Zhang escorts him back to his car, from where he can see Gogol standing on the walkway, a clicker in his right hand, commanding the animals. Against the sun he looks tall and lean and lonesome, and Steve thinks about the kind of guts - or the complete lack of survival instinct - a man needs, to be able to jump down to a cage of lethal animals, to save his employee’s life as well as his dinosaurs.

Gogol’s left hand is resting on his belt; he seems to take extra measures to keep the connection with the raptors limited to his right hand.

“It’s the arm,” Zhang says, and Steve realizes he was staring. It’s almost like she's read his thoughts. “They know it’s not a part of him.”

He turns to look at Zhang. He didn’t notice anything unusual about Gogol’s left hand, except the moderately odd fact that he was wearing a long-sleeved henley and a leather glove in the Central American heat. “The arm?”

She gestures with her left arm. “He has a prosthetic, and not like those shitty ones vets usually get. It’s really high-tech, I think he got it from Russia.”

Steve frowns. “How so?”

“He slips into Russian occasionally, so I figure he must be partly from there. And I sure as hell have never seen or heard anyone from U.S. Army been given a prosthetic like that.” She looks at him, suddenly hostile. “Look, sir, I’m only telling you this because you're new here, and I don’t want you to make your impression of him based on the talks of the folks back in the base. They don’t know him. They are scared of him, joke about him, call him rude names. He’s a good boss, and a good man, and he looks like he’s found here the first peace he's had in a long time. Don’t take it away from him.”

Steve stares at her for a few long seconds, then nods. If the man has impressed his co-workers this strongly, he probably is the guy to keep. “Thanks for telling me. I’ll keep that in mind.”

Zhang nods, sharply, and watches him get in his Jeep and drive away. Gogol doesn’t spare him even a glance.

When he gets back to the control center, Steve boots up his tablet and goes to check Gogol’s file. The trainer’s face stares back at him from the screen, and Steve is slightly shocked to see it: Gogol looked slim now, his sharp features stark against his dark hair, but three years ago Gogol had looked like a starved animal, eyes haunted and empty, cheekbones even more prominent above his sunken cheeks.

Gogol is a Russian-American veteran, like the nickname _Sarge_ and Zhang suggested, actively served in the Russo-Georgian war in 2008. There are some records of him in Chechnya before that, and afterwards vague implications of being a trainer. Steve isn’t stupid, and he can smell a redacted or even falsified file two miles away, even if the rest of InGen cannot. Gogol is Special Ops, at least. Nobody gets that kind of an empty stare and the nerve to jump into a raptor cage just from being a trainer. Steve thinks back to the utter lack of hesitation in Gogol’s movements when he vaulted down to mouth of peril, like he didn’t have any human objections against getting killed; like he was _used_ to it. Suddenly, Steve recalls the steely look in Gogol's eyes when Steve indicated that his raptors were more battlefield-ready than he let on. _Something_ happened to Gogol in the years he spent in the Caucasus, and Steve isn’t completely sure he wants to know what it was.

He scrolls on. Gogol has been credited as one of the best trainers and animal handlers on the island, and there're several notes about his intuition and understanding of animal psyche and sociality, as well as his expertise on security issues concerning the dinosaurs. He seems pretty competent man, on many levels.

There's a mention about Gogol’s disability: a note that simply confirms that he has an experimental cybernetic arm that will not affect his job or day-to-day life. In the medical check, he's been found to be in excellent health despite his numerous scars, which are listed in a very long and detailed paragraph, and the reinforcements and synthetic muscles in his upper body, to support the prosthetic arm’s weight and mend excessive muscle damage. He's been given a permission to live off-base in his own bungalow, not far from the raptor paddock.

Steve heard the ugly talk about Gogol, on his first day. The previous head of security called him ‘that creepy raptor-whispering terminator commie’ and the rest of the names haven't been very flattering, either. But now he's seen the blunt yet caring way Gogol treated his staff, the respect his team showed to him, and heard trainer Zhang defend him. It’s no wonder Gogol's been given the role of leading the raptor training: there's something dangerous and animal-like in the man, all the way down to the tilt of his head when he considered something.

Gogol is the same age as Bucky would be, now. He has Bucky’s eyes, and Steve tries very hard to not think about it.

\--

The roof is warm. He’s sprawled in his nest, breathing slowly through his mask, sweating slightly in the direct sunshine in his heavy body armor. There are two other snipers on the opposite side of the street, at his ten and two o’clock: SHIELD’s STRIKE team, officially assigned to protect Captain Rogers’ life, unofficially to end it.

It’s the fifth of May 2014, 9:55 in the morning.

Rogers comes out. The Soldier has seen his picture on several occasions, but it’s still like seeing him for the first time: his gaze sweeps Rogers’ tired, handsome face, his hunched shoulders. He adjusts his rifle, makes some calculations, follows Captain as he checks that the door of the apartment building is locked behind him.

Then Rogers turns, looks up straight into the scope because he knows STRIKE is assigned to him, and salutes. There’s a soft, cynical smile in the corner of his mouth, and the movement is short and a little mocking. The sand around him is golden and brown, and in his uniform he looks like the god of war, when he salutes Bucky for--

The Soldier almost knocks his rifle down in surprise. There isn’t sand anywhere to be seen. Rogers is in civilian clothes. And who, who the hell is _Bucky?_

There's something urgent in his head, like white buzzing, and he closes his eyes, tries to catch it.

When he comes to, Rogers is already gone, and there is nervous movement on the rooftop across from him.

“Soldier,” says the man on his ten in the earpiece. “Why didn’t you take the shot? You were given a m--” His sentence cuts off as the Soldier turns his rifle towards the opposite building and dispatches the other snipers with two well-aimed shots. Then, the Soldier leaves with his rifle, and never turns up to the rendezvous point. The buzzing in his head is increasing.

Rogers and his friends take HYDRA and SHIELD down ninety minutes later. The Soldier blows up a bank vault in downtown ten minutes before it; dives into the Potomac fifteen minutes afterwards to fish a flash of blue uniform up. He leaves Rogers on the shore after checking that he's still breathing.

Three days later, he stares at Rogers standing helplessly in the grocery store, looking like the world has deposited itself on his shoulders. The Soldier still doesn’t know why he is familiar, but it feels uncomfortable to see him in the dairy aisle, empty-eyed and lost. (It will come back, later, in an abandoned house somewhere in Tennessee, and the Soldier punches his metal hand through the wall and _screams_ , because there are targets, and there are soldiers, and there are clean-wiped men pointing guns at someone they loved half a lifetime ago.)

He knows only snippets of where he's been and what he's done, but he knows this: there's a file, somewhere, hidden in plain sight, that has the details of the Project Winter Soldier; and there are people who will die in his hands for their contributions for that file.

\--

“Masrani wants James Gogol to inspect the new paddock,” Steve tells Sam when he gets back to his office from the control room, two days after the incident at the raptor pen. “Any idea why?”

Sam looks up from his Facebook feed. He got recruited by InGen Security Operations Unit first, three months before Steve realized how miserable he was in America and followed him south. Sam spends a lot of time talking to people, finding out the weirdest stuff about their fields, and he seems to genuinely enjoy being on the island. Here, he doesn’t look like Riley was a constant, heavy shadow on his shoulders.

“Listen to him and get Gogol here,” Sam says, keeps scrolling his feed. “I know he isn’t training animals as big as this motherfucker, but he has a very uncanny sense of what InGen’s dinosaurs are generally capable of. And his raptors are wicked smart, so he’s gotta be ahead of them all times. He’s a mean dude to have in a team.”

Steve breathes noisily in through his nose and reaches to his belt to get his pager. All the InGen personnel in leading positions have two-way pagers, so that if the cellular coverage fails, they still have a way to communicate. He taps a short message to Gogol, and not a minute later gets a reply. _On my way._

“Sergeant Gogol,” Steve greets him as he enters twelve minutes later. “Glad you could make it.”

“Captain,” Gogol says shortly as he closes the door behind him, nods at Sam. “Wilson.”

Sam lifts a hand in greeting and finally puts his phone away. “Hey Sarge, good to see you.”

“Please, call me Steve,” Steve tries, musters up a smile.

Gogol shrugs and sits down. His cargo pants have mysterious stains in them, he has sooty dirt on his cheekbone, and Steve is pretty sure there's rat blood on his long-sleeved shirt and in his messy, dirty hair. A regular day uphill at RRA, it seems. He's still holding his clicker in his ungloved hand.

“You have a good idea about the security at the Raptor Research Arena, right?” Sam asks, leaning back in his chair until it’s perched on the two hind legs. Gogol nods. “How familiar are you with the new additions to the park?”

“Somewhat,” Gogol replies, cocking his head curiously. “I keep mostly to our facility, but I know there's been some talk about a new attraction.”

“You’re not wrong,” Steve says and taps his tablet, bringing up the redacted file he had been checking before Gogol came in. “This is _Indominus rex_ , a completely new hybrid dinosaur, fully created in the lab.”

“Bigger. Badder. More teeth,” Sam adds, helpfully, and bares his own teeth.

Gogol stares at the picture, and briefly there's the same blank look in his eyes that Steve recognizes from his photo in the personnel database. Then he makes a face, just slightly, and says, “Jesus. What’s this thing made of?”

“Base code’s T-rex, rest is classified,” Sam says lazily, tilting precariously in his chair. “Even Masrani, the biggest boss of them all, doesn’t know. It’s all in Doctor Wu’s capable hands.”

“Why is she white?”

Sam shrugs, and Gogol exhales through his nose like he’s disapproving. “Motherfucking idiots,” he mutters, barely audibly. Steve agrees, silently. “So, what do you need me for?”

Steve brings the layout and photos of the cage up on the screen. “This is the Indominus rex’s paddock. There's been some doubts whether it's fully secure, and they're currently making the walls higher, to accommodate her. She’s bigger than they thought she would be, and she hasn’t even stopped growing. The feeding is done by a crane, the same procedure as the T-rex has.”

Gogol inspects the pictures, his head tilted and eyes narrowed. His mouth is slightly pursed, like he’s mulling something over. “Who designed that?” he finally asks, voice neutral. “Did they know what they were about to be caging?”

Steve and Sam exchange looks. Gogol has a point, but it’s not exactly comforting to admit that. “Well, uh, Dr. Wu and his team are the only ones to know the specifics,” Steve tells him after a beat.

Gogol turns to look at him. There's an angry twist to the corner of his mouth that is so _Bucky_ that Steve flinches, slightly. “Are you tellin’ me,” he says slowly, like he’s talking to a pair of idiots, “that the damn people in charge of building the cage were _not_ aware of what the fuck this animal's made of?”

“Yeah,” Sam replies. “That’s why Mr. Masrani wants you to inspect the paddock and evaluate the dinosaur once the wallwork is finished. You have the most experience on this sort of stuff.”

Gogol inhales very, very slowly; puts his clicker on the table. “Jesus Christ,” he sighs. “When will these fucking people understand that their animals are probably smarter than they are themselves. Listen, has this dinosaur had any social contacts?”

“Nope,” Sam says, indicating to the file with his hand. “She ate her unhatched sibling right after she hatched herself, so she’s the special snowflake. She has her own paddock and was raised in a lab.”

Gogol honest-to-god-facepalms with both hands, leans his elbows to Steve’s desk and heaves a deep sigh. There's a flash of metal between his sleeve and glove: the groove of his cybernetic wrist. His left arm makes a soft, whirring noise that is so utterly inhuman that Steve shivers a little. Then, he looks between Sam and Steve, mouth set, jaw squared. The soot on his cheekbone is more smudged, and he looks tired and pissed off.

“I’ll tell you this now, so you'll know what my initial assessment will be when I see the dinosaur,” he says. “My velociraptors have learnt social skills since they hatched, because they have siblings, they have a _pack_. This animal’s social skills are limited to a fucking crane. It, combined with the fact that nobody knows what genes she has, will make her more unpredictable and dangerous than any other dinosaur in this park.”

He shakes his head, gets up. “Let me know when you need me to do it. I gotta get back, we had a situation when I left.”

“Sure,” Steve stammers, surprised by the abrupt departure. “I’ll send you a word. Thank you.”

Gogol nods his goodbyes, first to Steve and then to Sam, and leaves.

 

On the way out, James puts his hand in his pocket and realizes that he's left his clicker in Rogers’ office. He turns and goes back, but halts just outside the closed door, when he hears his own name through it.

“You act a little weird around Gogol,” Wilson’s voice says, conversationally. There's a series of familiar clicks, and James knows Sam's found his clicker. “Wanna tell me the reason?”

“I don’t act weirdly,” Rogers dismisses, but he isn’t very convincing liar. He's never been.

Wilson snorts, like he can see right through Rogers’ bullshit.

There's a short, patient silence, and then Rogers cracks. “He just-- he reminds me of someone.”

There is a soft groan of Wilson’s chair, when he sits up straight, and plants his boots heavily on the floor. “You mean Barnes.”

James doesn’t wonder how Wilson knows about him. Steve’s misery was radiating off him, back in D.C., when James had already been gone for a decade.

“He looks so much like Bucky,” Rogers murmurs, sounding miserable and very, very young. “And Bucky... He used to feed the dogs in the neighbourhood, training them in the evenings he wasn’t working or out.”

James remembers the mutts with lopsided ears, learning to guard their resident homeless Gulf vet from muggers. Training a pack of raptors is very different than that, but something has stayed.

“Look, Steve,” Wilson says, not unkindly. “Your friend’s been MIA for thirteen years. Maybe it's time for you to let his ghost rest.”

“I can’t,” Rogers says, rough and strangled. “I’m _trying_ , Sam, I am, but just-- I can’t. I failed to keep him safe. It’s gonna eat me forever.”

James creeps silently away, leaving his clicker behind. He goes back to his raptors, sits down in the entryway cage, and has a stare-off with Blue. He tries so hard to be kind to them, like he tried to be kind to the mutts in Brooklyn, many years ago. He hopes they know it.

Wilson drops by twenty-five minutes later and gives James his clicker back, throws a dead bat to Delta, and leaves, looking thoughtful.

\--

James doesn’t hear from Rogers for a while, and since the wallwork at the Indominus rex paddock is still going, he’s content to spend his time around the raptor pen. He knows that it’s only a matter of days, at best, before Rogers realizes that James doesn’t only resemble his dead friend uncannily but actually _is_ him, and then the temporary peace James has built for himself here will change permanently.

Until then, James will train his raptors as usual; write reports; deal with Echo’s recently emerged negative age; help his staff around the research arena; drive around the outer walls to see that the whole paddock is still as secure as it should be.

Hoskins comes over one morning, waxing praise at James and his team’s work on the raptors, and being generally unbearable. Surprisingly, Sam Wilson is trailing behind him, possibly on Rogers’ orders. James is quietly glad: he likes Wilson and his easy camaraderie, and having to listen to Hoskins’ propaganda is easier with him there.

Melanie has the raptors in their holding pens, while Sunny and two others are checking the paddock and picking up a week’s worth of dry goat bones and pig hooves that have been discarded after feeding. Blue and her gang aren’t especially fond of the holding pens, to which James can relate, and unfortunately the pens make approaching them very easy.

“Let’s go see them,” Hoskins decides, and since he’s the boss, it’s impossible for James to forbid it. So he puts his right hand on the fingerprint scanner, has his retina confirmed, and unlocks the door, silently wishing that the raptors weren’t muzzled so Blue could bite Hoskins’ hand off. Or perhaps his head.

“Amazing, aren’t they,” Hoskins beams, ignoring the glare Melanie sends him, and walking closer towards Blue. “Imagine them equipped with the latest technology and put in military use. Drones can be hacked, but animals as smart as these? No way. They would be more efficient on the field than any soldier. What do you think, Wilson?”

“Dunno, sir,” Wilson drawls. He raises his eyebrows at James when Hoskins’ back is turned, then winks. “I’m a simple pararescue sergeant, don’t know much about what happens on the ground level.”

Hoskins laughs at that, then looks back at James. “Is it okay to touch it?”

James bristles at the way Hoskins calls Blue “it”, but shrugs and spreads his hands a little like saying _if you must_ , so Hoskins steps closer to Blue and puts carefully his hand on the side of her head. Blue starts growling before his hand is even touching, and it’s deeply satisfying to see him flinch, minutely, before bracing himself and making contact.

“Easy, Blue,” James says sharply and tries to not glare at Hoskins, himself. Wilson is watching the other raptors, who are also starting to make deep, threatening noises. Charlie, who's closest, is staring Hoskins with her one visible eye, angry and narrowed.

James grits his teeth, then strides to Blue. “That’s enough,” he snaps. “They’re agitated. We better leave them.”

Delta whines when she hears James’ voice, and Melanie shushes her. For a brief moment, and not for the first time, James feels like a foster daddy with some really fucked up kids.

“Right,” Hoskins says and pulls his hand back just a bit too quickly, claps his hand on James’ metal shoulder and winces, before he backs up to where Wilson is standing. “Amazing things, these animals.”

Blue's still growling, so James touches her temple softly with his right hand and brushes her scales with his fingertips until she stops. “I’m sorry, babydoll,” he murmurs, so quiet that the others can’t hear him, then straightens and goes back to herd Hoskins and Wilson out.

“Will they be ready for field tests soon, Gogol?” Hoskins asks when they're outside.

James looks at him, unimpressed. “They aren't even ready for public display yet. I doubt any sort of field tests are in question so far.”

“You keep telling me that, but eventually you’ll have to admit that it’s what they were created for, James,” Hoskins tuts.

“Don’t call me that,” James replies, calmly. He stares at Hoskins as unnervingly as he can, until Hoskins turns away.

“I’ll be back,” Hoskins calls over his shoulder as he strides to his car. Coward. “You better have lost that attitude and gained some results by then.”

James doesn’t say anything. He and Wilson watch Hoskins drive away, and then Wilson whistles a little. “You’re getting on his nerves, Sarge.”

James snorts without mirth. “That fuckwit has been getting on my nerves for three years. You should've seen him when the girls were barely hatched. Charlie almost bit his finger off.”

Wilson chuckles. “I would’ve paid to see that,” he muses, then offers his hand for a shake. “Thanks for the tour, I better get back. Say hi to Melanie for me.”

James shakes his hand and nods. “See you around.”

Wilson mock-salutes him, gets in his Jeep, and leaves to continue his tour. James still doesn’t know why he came in the first place.

\--

Steve isn’t proud to admit that he likes to watch the security tapes from the Raptor Research Arena, sometimes. He's fascinated by the animals, true, but he's equally intrigued by Gogol and the way he interacts with his team and the raptors. It has nothing to do with how much he resembles Bucky. Nothing.

The raptors are curled up in a sleepy, scaly puppy pile, and Zhang's wrestling with a crane that isn’t working properly. Gogol’s leafing through thick folders in his office, but when the intern appears at his door, he leaves it and goes out to help Zhang. Steve’s checking other reports and following the feed from the corner of his eye, but when he sees Gogol pull off the glove from his left hand and push his sleeves up to his elbows, he turns fully to the screen.

Under the soft afternoon sun, Gogol’s metal arm looks like a movie prop. The feed is slightly blurry, but Steve can see the plates scaling down his forearm like dinosaur skin, when he crouches next to Zhang and starts inspecting the broken crane. The plates move like ripples, when Gogol grabs a handle and starts pulling it back.

As Steve stares at Gogol’s arm, he starts to get slightly uncomfortable, and it takes him a long while to understand why.

It isn’t the first time he's seen that arm.

He frowns, puts his report away and sends a text to Clint.

_Hey, wasn’t there a HYDRA operative with a metal arm?_

Clint texts back barely a minute later.

_Yeah, the ghost assassin. They called him Winter Soldier, he shot Nat in the gut in 2008. Nobody’s heard of him being active for a while. How so?_

_Nothing to worry about,_ Steve taps, careful to not raise any alarms. _Just saw a cool prosthetic and was reminded of him._

Then he puts his phone on the desk and leans his elbows against the hardwood, covers his eyes with his hands.

James Gogol is the Winter Soldier. The blunt-talking man with driest wit Steve's seen for a while, who cares for his team members, puts the wellbeing of animals before the desires of the public, and calls his leading raptor _babydoll_ , is a HYDRA assassin whose secrecy was so tight that people thought he was a poltergeist.

Gogol’s blank-eyed stare doesn’t seem so weird anymore. Jesus.

For a moment, he wonders if Gogol’s presence on the island is a long con; if InGen Security Division is actually a cell of HYDRA. But then he has to take a deep breath and remind himself that there's nothing, _nothing_ , that would indicate it. Hoskins is a moron but not that smart that he could run a HYDRA cell and not be caught. Besides InGen Security Division is a partner of United Nations Security Council. Unless-- unless it’s SHIELD and HYDRA all over again.

 _I’m being paranoid_ , he thinks, and forces himself to breathe deeply. _But I have to handle this._

 

When Steve closes the Jeep door two hours later, he can hear occasional clanging and soft music from the front yard of the house. He squares his jaw - if Gogol really is the Winter Soldier, Steve owes it to him to actually hear out his story before alerting his presence to the authorities. But when he rounds the corner, the words he practised on his way from the raptor pen to Gogol’s bungalow suddenly dry in his mouth.

Gogol is fixing his dirt bike and humming along to a record that’s playing on his veranda. He’s dressed only in cargo pants and a dark undershirt, and for the first time Steve can see the arm fully, from where it’s attached at his clavicle to the surprisingly deft-looking fingers. There's some scratched-out red paint barely visible at the shoulder, where the painted red star used to be. It’s a gorgeous piece of engineering, but the horrifying scarring around the line between metal and skin, as well as the knowledge about inforced bones and synthetic muscles, makes it look grisly and heavy.

Gogol’s hair is pulled back, and he is clean-shaven, and Steve - Steve _knows_ that profile, knows that jawline, even though the last time he saw it there was still some baby fat clinging to it. He stops at his tracks, and that’s when Gogol starts to sing softly along, and he recognizes the song. Gogol has a nice, rich tenor that is even more familiar to Steve than the melody of Bucky’s old favourite song.

 _It’s gonna take a lot to drag me away from you_ , sings Bucky on the fire escape in Brooklyn, in the desert under his breath, on Isla Nublar in front of Steve, risen from the grave. _There’s nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do._

 _But it didn’t take a lot_ , Steve thinks with a touch of hysteria. Only a well-aimed but ill-informed air strike by the army they were working for, because their missions were so classified that they didn’t show up in the logs for Air Force personnel. Officially, there was nothing but enemy territory and terrorist cells on the mountains in the north part of the country. Unofficially, there was Bucky, on a sniper’s mission with Steve and Gabe as his backup.

Long story short: Gabe came back with two holes in his fatigues; Bucky never did; Steve ripped Air Force a new one and tried unsuccessfully to get blind drunk, to forget the image of Bucky tumbling down from his nest on the mountain, disappearing into a ravine. Then he somehow managed to hold on to drying hope for years, for nothing.

“Bucky?” Steve stutters, loud enough to be heard over the music. His heart feels like it’s drumming, up in his mouth.

Gogol turns, and something dark passes over his face, but he stands up and says, “Steve.” It’s the first time he's called him that, and it’s also the first time in thirteen years Steve's heard his name in that voice.

“I thought you were dead,” Steve manages.

Bucky's mouth twists up in one corner, bitterly amused. “Funny,” he says, “so did I.”

Steve take a step, then another, then he’s stumbling forward, pulled by Bucky’s gravity. Bucky raises his metal hand, palm forward, to stop him. “I’m dangerous, Stevie,” he warns, but he sounds sad and a little desperate. Steve aches for him, for the old, well-loved nickname. “You don’t know what I’ve done.”

“I don’t care if you’re the Winter Soldier,” Steve blurts, “just-- just _let me_ , Bucky, _please_.”

Bucky looks shocked, drops his hand, and just stands there, when Steve reaches him and pulls him in. He smells like aftershave and dirt and wet dust when Steve inhales him, and his arms come slowly, slowly up around Steve's shoulders. Steve tightens his hold and listens to Bucky’s soft exhale.

“Let’s take this inside,” Bucky murmurs into his ear. “It’s a long and terrible story.”

They go inside. Bucky puts on coffee while Steve stares at him, drinking in his shape: he’s a lot leaner and a little shorter that Steve remembers, and his movements are a curious mix of the old swagger and the new, animal-like precision. All the metal in his body probably makes him heavier than he used to be, so his balance is different, his weight lower, and he walks on the balls of his feet, silent and light as a feather even in his heavy boots.

Once the coffee is brewing, Bucky goes to another room and comes back after a couple of minutes with a thick manila folder. He takes one cup from the sink, rinses it, and pours coffee before he sits down at the kitchen table and says, “The coffee’s for me, because I ain’t sure you want to drink anything with this.”

He kicks his boots off under the table and puts the folder down in front of Steve. There’s a faded stamp with HYDRA’s insignia on the cover, and some cyrillic. Steve already feels sick. In the SHIELD data dump, there wasn't a single peep about the Winter Soldier, and this must be why: the 21st century is flummoxed by paper, so how else to keep a world-class operative secret, than to keep all files on paper in one single folder. Digitally, the Soldier doesn’t exist. In this century it means that he's a ghost.

“This is where I’ve been since 2004,” Bucky says, quietly, and flips the file open.

Not fifteen minutes later, Steve goes to the bathroom and retches until his stomach is empty. Bucky stands in the doorway and watches him, his familiar blue eyes sad and far away, and Steve thinks that he's never wanted to rip a person apart with his bare hands, but those people - those people who burned up Bucky’s mind and turned him into their trained, unleashed raptor? They would deserve it.

“Are they dead?” Steve asks, when he's stopped heaving and has collapsed on the floor.

Bucky nods. He scrubs his flesh hand over the grooves of plates in his left palm, like he’s trying to get something off them.

“Good,” Steve replies and rests his forehead against the cool, grey tile. Bucky comes in, flushes the toilet, and crouches next to him; puts his warm right hand on the back of Steve's neck and says softly, “You were my last mission. They ordered me to shoot you from the roof of your neighbour’s house, in D.C.”

Steve swallows, remembers the corruption of the STRIKE team. “Why didn’t you?”

Bucky sits down, strokes his shoulders, his hair, his back in gentle, halting movements, like he's forgotten how to touch people instead of dinosaurs. “You saluted me,” he tells, and Steve’s heart feels like it’s cracking to pieces. “You didn't know it was me and you still looked up to my scope and saluted, like you used to do in Iraq.” He hesitates. “I-- I could see the sand around you, and freaked out. Shot the two handlers who were there to oversee the mission.”

Steve turns his head so he can look at Bucky, at the metal arm braced on his knee, and realizes something. “It _was_ you,” he says. “You pulled me out of the river. I thought I dreamed you up.”

Bucky looks uncomfortable but nods, just slightly. Steve closes his eyes and laughs, helplessly; a hoarse, broken sound. “You didn't remember me,” he murmurs and puts his hand on Bucky’s knee closest to him. “And still you did it.”

“Somebody’s gotta fish your stupid ass up when you stick your goddamn nose in the wrong place,” Bucky scolds, and the old fondness is there. “Even with brain damage I could see that.”

“Jesus,” Steve says, grips his knee a little tighter. “I’ve missed you so fucking much, you asshole.”

Bucky sounds like he’s smiling, when he pats Steve’s hand carefully with his metal one and says, “Get up, punk. Even my first raptor is livelier than you, and she was put down two years ago.”

They go back to the kitchen, and Bucky makes him a sandwich.

“How did you end up here?” Steve asks when he’s eating.

Bucky shrugs and pours himself more coffee. “It was warm and far away. That was all I wanted, but then I remembered the mutts, back home, and thought that maybe I would like it here.”

“And you did?”

Bucky smiles, slightly, like he used to when he had a secret he really wanted to tell. It’s the same smile Steve saw in the security feed, when he was watching his raptors. “Yeah,” he says. “I do.”

 

Steve doesn’t leave, even though it starts to get dark, even though his pager beeps several times with messages, probably from Wilson. It’s strange, watching him sit in James’ modest kitchen, an empty plate and bread crumbs in front of him.

“I gave up the shield,” Steve tells him, chases crumbs with his finger. “I did what they told me to do for almost fifteen years, and then they turned against me and called me a vigilante.” James listens to him, lets him talk. “Sam got fed up first - I’d met him after I got an honorable discharge from the army, about 2011 or so - and when they wanted me to sign a contract and submit to government control, I just realized that it wasn’t worth it. I was tired and I was fucking _miserable_. You’d been gone for over thirteen years. So I gave up the shield, said goodbye to the friends I still had, and came here after Sam, when InGen offered me a job.”

Steve looks up, eyes suspiciously shiny. “Never thought I’d find you.”

They're quiet for a moment. Then James touches softly his arm and murmurs, “You realize that I’m not your old Bucky anymore, right? I didn’t come back to you after I got my memory back, because I knew I wasn’t and that you would be disappointed by it. I’ve done lots of terrible things since you last saw me.”

“Jesus, Buck,” Steve says. His voice sounds thick and a little wet. “I know that you’re not. And I’ve done a lot of things that my ma wouldn’t be proud of since you fell, so no, the only one I’m disappointed in is myself. I should’ve gone back to look for you. I shouldn’t have let you fall.”

“But I did,” James says and shakes his head. “You couldn’t have done anything. Your sorry ass would’ve been with me in HYDRA’s hands.”

Steve looks at him for a long while then, and finally cracks a dry smile. “I’ve loved you so goddamn long that sometimes I question my sanity,” he says and then looks hesitating. It’s the first time ever that he's said it out loud to James. “You -- you knew that, right?”

James squeezes his arm, gently, and lets go. “Not back then, no,” he says. “But I know it now.”

For that one long year they spent together in Iraq, James did the only thing he was good at: he kept Steve safe. If it meant staying at his six, taking care of his squad, looking away when Agent Carter came to talk to Steve, or telling him that they had to stop the whatever-it-was they had been doing in Brooklyn, then so be it; he did it. There was a woman who looked at Steve like he deserved to be looked at, now, so Steve didn’t need James for that anymore.

He did wonder, sometimes, but then he remembered the look on Steve’s face when he saw Agent Carter, and didn’t wonder any longer. James didn’t ask, didn’t tell, convinced himself that Steve was happy.

James loved him; he didn’t love James back; that’s it. It took him ten and half years and countless memory wipes to understand it wasn’t true.

“Bucky,” Steve says, his eyes dark. Then, he reaches over the table corner, cups James’ jaw with his large, warm hands and kisses him on the mouth, and-- _Oh_ , James thinks. This, he remembers: angry, defiant kisses before he went to war; angry, quiet fucking in the supply closet of the base after Steve had gone and become a human guinea pig. Steve was angry when James left him behind, and James was furious when Steve got himself signed up, just to prove his worth, and then trampled on his own to taliban territory, just because he couldn’t accept the fact that his best friend and occasional fuckbuddy was a prisoner of war. James was furious, because he knew there was something ugly uncoiling inside him that would've been better off if left there, and yet Steve had dragged it back.

It’s funny, James thinks as he kisses back and twists his hands in Steve’s shirt, how angry can you be at the only fucking person you have ever loved like that. Now Steve kisses him the same way he loves, like an idiot, steadfast and firm and forever, and lets James take him to bed.

 

James wakes up in the small hours. The bed is empty next to him, but Steve is standing in front of the window, listening to the waves crashing against the shore; the song of the jungle. James looks at his naked back, pale in the night, lets his gaze glide down to Steve’s hips and his long, strong legs. His shape is achingly familiar and still strange, and James wishes he could shake the past ten years from his own mismatched shoulders, so he could give Steve something or someone he deserves. But Steve has changed too, has lived so long with the war that it’s in his bones, and maybe-- maybe James has what it takes to love Steve now: hands filled with ghost blood, eyes that have seen more death than life, a vivid memory of a little punk filled with temper bigger than his skin.

There was a point, somewhere, sometime after Steve'd saved him and his squad from the Iraqi HYDRA cell, when James remembers turning to look at Steve, shining and splendid like a god of war, his uniform crisp and clean next to James’ rumpled, tired shape. There was a point, somewhere, when James looked at Steve flirting clumsily with Agent Carter, turned away, and thought, _I would've wanted to be good for him, someday._

But he'd been cut open, pumped full of drugs, waterboarded and interrogated, and the boy who had wanted so hard to be good enough for Steve to deserve had drowned in a dirty, foul-smelling bag. And James - had he really been Bucky anymore, back then, or had the seed of the Soldier been sowed already? - realized, painfully, that “someday” would never come, not for him.

 _I would've wanted to be good for him, someday_ , he had thought, his hands shaking with a tremor he couldn’t force to stop, and it'd felt like a needle in the crook of his elbow, like choking on water in the darkness, like silently, patiently waiting for death to come.

Steve turns and sees that he’s awake, his mouth curving in a helpless, content smile, and James averts his eyes, because Brooklyn is long gone, Iraq is long gone, but Steve is still there, shining and splendid.

When they were kids Steve said, _I wanna know everything about you, Buck. I_ will _know everything._

 _Too bad_ , James replied, his ratty t-shirt and scraped knees like a statement. _You can’t know everything, because even I don’t know. And what if I find out something about myself but forget it before you can learn it?_

Steve shrugged, jutted his lower lip forward in determination. _I’m gonna try anyway._

James supposes they haven’t gotten any further than that in twenty-five years.

Steve comes back to bed, curls himself around James, and murmurs, “Go back to sleep. It’s not dawn yet.”

James closes his eyes, puts his flesh-and-blood hand on top of Steve’s. They still have a couple of hours before the morning comes; before someone notices the lack of thermal signals in the cage of Indominus rex; before Steve’s pager on the nightstand goes crazy, and they rush down to the site; before everything goes to hell.

Steve is warm and solid against him; the first real taste of peace and home in a decade.

It’s not dawn yet.

**Author's Note:**

> So, I'm not an expert on any of the following: animal training, dinosaurs, U.S. Army operations, Bucky's metal arm, writing a strong backstory.
> 
> Instead, I am an expert on the following: being scared shitless by raptors for about 20 years and counting, having emotions about Bucky Barnes, overusing the verb "says", failing to make a good playlist for this even though I want to, swearing excessively in my personal life, and lip-syncing Africa with passion.
> 
> Weirdly, I have actually managed to start, write and finish something in a span of three weeks. THREE WEEKS. That's a personal record, usually it takes about three years.
> 
> Come say hi to [my tumblr](http://rohkeutta.tumblr.com)!


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